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Two men who were allegedly shot outside a pre-Super Bowl party that followed a Justin Bieber concert last year have filed a wide-ranging lawsuit Bieber and Kodak Black, among a host of other defendants.
Plaintiffs Mark Schaefer and Adam Rahman are alleging negligence, battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress in claims brought by lawyer Gloria Allred over injuries they say they suffered during the Feb. 11, 2022, incident, which occurred outside Los Angeles restaurant The Nice Guy where the party was being held. Filed Thursday (Feb. 9) and obtained by Billboard, the suit claims that the defendants “negligently breached the duties owed to Plaintiffs” by “failing to provide adequate security; failing to warn Plaintiffs of the danger; increasing the likelihood of violence; and/or instigating, escalating, and exacerbating the impact of the violence.”
Kodak Black is solely named on a total of three counts — assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress — with the plaintiffs singling out his conduct as a “substantial factor” in causing them harm.
The complaint goes on to claim that both plaintiffs suffered “physical pain, mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, physical impairment, inconvenience, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and severe emotional distress,” along with financial harm including medical expenses and lost earnings. Schaefer and Rahman are asking for general, special and punitive/exemplary damages in amounts to be determined at trial.
Reps for Kodak Black and Bieber did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On the night of the party, which was held on Feb. 11, 2022, the LAPD reported that four men, reportedly including Kodak Black, were shot outside The Nice Guy. Videos posted to TMZ and social media showed Black posing for photos with a group of people outside the restaurant when a fight broke out. Black was among several people involved in the scuffle when shots rang out, sending everyone at the scene running for cover.
The party followed Bieber’s private concert at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Calif., which was held as part of “Homecoming Weekend” — a series of events held in advance of that year’s Super Bowl. Guests at the bash also reportedly included Jeff Bezos, Hamilton actor Anthony Ramos, NFL Hall-of-Famer Tony Gonzalez, Drake, Khloe Kardashian, Tobey Maguire and Bieber’s wife Hailey Bieber.
A federal appeals court on Monday (Feb. 13) rejected an antitrust lawsuit accusing Ticketmaster and Live Nation of exploiting its “impregnable market power” to foist inflated prices on hundreds of thousands of fans, ruling that concertgoers forfeited their right to sue when they bought their tickets.
In a 24-page ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an earlier ruling that dismissed the proposed class action, saying that when the fans purchased their tickets, they had agreed to settle any disputes with Ticketmaster via private arbitration rather than in open court.
On appeal, attorneys for the plaintiffs had challenged the validity of that agreement, arguing it had not been presented clearly enough to customers. But in Monday’s decision, the appeals court was unswayed.
“At three independent stages — when creating an account, signing into an account, and completing a purchase — Ticketmaster and Live Nation webpage users are presented with a confirmation button above which text informs the user that, by clicking on this button, ‘you agree to our Terms of Use,’” Judge Danny J. Boggs wrote for a panel of three judges. “A reasonable user would have seen the notice and been able to locate the terms via hyperlink.”
The ruling came as Live Nation and Ticketmaster are facing heightened scrutiny over their market power in the wake of a disastrous November rollout of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The incident, which saw widespread service delays and website crashes, has prompted calls from lawmakers in Washington D.C. to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged to create their current structure in 2010. It has also spawned investigations from attorneys general around the country and at least two antitrust class actions. The DOJ is also reportedly investigating Live Nation for antitrust violations, though the probe predated the Swift tour debacle.
The case decided on Monday was filed back in 2020 but raised similar accusations to critics who have spoken out in the wake of the Swift incident. Aiming to represent “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of customers, the proposed class action alleged that Live Nation’s dominance allowed it to increase prices for consumers and perform other “predatory acts” — calling it a “monster” that “must be stopped.”
“Defendants’ anticompetitive scheme has been wildly successful and today threatens to put nearly all ticketing services for major concert venues (primary and secondary) in the United States under Ticketmaster’s monopolistic thumb,” the accusers wrote in their April 2020 complaint.
But the case was quickly tossed out. A federal judge ruled in 2021 that Live Nation and Ticketmaster users had clearly assented to a form of so-called clickwrap agreement — a common online tool that presents users with terms of service before proceeding — that required them to resolve any such claims against Live Nation via a private arbitration process.
Monday’s ruling upheld that decision for Live Nation. The appeals court said the company’s agreement was not the kind of “pure clickwrap” that offers users the clearest presentation of terms of service, but the court said it also was not “browsewrap” — a less effective form of user agreement where terms are “hidden in links located at the bottom of webpages.” Whatever the format, the appeals court said Live Nation’s version “did enough” to pass legal muster.
“Appellees’ notice is conspicuously displayed directly above or below the action button at each of three independent stages that a user must complete before purchasing tickets,” Judge Boggs wrote for the court. “Crucially, the ‘Terms of Use’ hyperlink is conspicuously distinguished from the surrounding text in bright blue font, making its presence readily apparent.”
The ruling will effectively end the current case, but a second similar lawsuit against Live Nation (filed by the same team of attorneys from the law firm Quinn Emmanuel) based on slightly tweaked allegations is still pending in a lower federal court.
Both a representative for Live Nation and an attorney for the plaintiffs did not immediately return a request for comment on the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.
Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) has sold its Spanish-language network Mega TV to Voz Media for $64 million, the company announced Monday (Feb. 13). The sale, which includes associated real estate, preserves the Hispanic ownership of Mega TV, which targets Spanish-speaking Latinos in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
The purchase must still be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Founded in 1983, SBS is a Spanish-language media company that owns and operates radio stations in the Tropical, Regional Mexican, Spanish Adult Contemporary, Top 40 and Urbano formats. It also operates AIRE Radio Networks, a national radio platform that boasts more than 290 affiliated stations reaching 95% of the U.S. Hispanic audience, according to the company. SBS went public in 1999.
Miami-based Mega TV — a staple in Hispanic television that boasts over-the-air, cable and satellite distribution in Puerto Rico and multiple affiliates throughout the mainland U.S. — airs around three dozen original programs, including Bayly, Dante Night Show, Mega Noticiero, La Corte del Pueblo, Latin Angels and Mega Kids.
“I am very proud of the nearly two decades of award-winning programming, community dedication and industry accomplishments achieved by Mega TV, a network operation that succeeded in forging its own unique position among Hispanic viewers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico,” said SBS chairman/CEO Raúl Alarcón in a statement.
Alarcón continued: “I am especially pleased to leave this unique asset in the hands of a dedicated Hispanic owner, Orlando Salazar, the founder of Voz Media, who will continue the expansion of Mega TV and honor its unwavering commitment to faithfully serve our nation’s burgeoning Latino population. Minority ownership of the media, and the opportunities it affords to our nation’s fastest-growing constituency, is a critical component in guaranteeing a stable, profitable and promising future for America.”
Voz Media was founded in 2022 by CEO Orlando Salazar in Dallas, with headquarters in Las Colinas, Tex. The company, which provides “alternative news and content for Latinos,” is planning a slate of original series and films “that reflect the core Hispanic values of hard work, faith and commitment to family” for its streaming platform targeted at the U.S. Spanish-speaking market and Latin America, according to a press release. The company also has offices in Miami and Madrid.
“It is an honor for Voz Media to be selected to continue the work and tradition started by Raúl Alarcón and Mega TV in the Spanish language television media market,” added Salazar. “We take seriously the challenge of moving Mega TV forward in both reach and content, as we continue to serve Spanish speakers across the United States.”
SBS president/COO Albert Rodriguez added, “We couldn’t be more proud of the fact that the legacy of Mega TV will continue under the leadership of another Hispanic-owned media company. Orlando and the Voz Media team have our unqualified support and we look forward to working with them throughout this transition and beyond.”
Jangwon Lee‘s life in music began in typical Korean fashion. “All the kids in my generation grew up with the piano at some point in their lives,” Lee says over the phone from Seoul. His love of the instrument continued beyond childhood with a piano duo, The Serendipity, but has taken a back seat to serial entrepreneurism.
While studying business administration at Seoul National University, Lee co-founded Campusdal, a food delivery app. Then, after two years in the Korean air force, he founded Mapiacompany, a technology firm that operates three online platforms for independent musicians to sell digital sheet music. The experience set the stage for Lee’s remaking of Korea’s music intellectual property (IP) business.
“It gave me the legal knowledge that was necessary to start my new business — the publishing, the copyright laws, how to monetize, how to distribute the royalties,” Lee says.
Now, Lee is the CEO of two-year-old Beyond Music, a music investment firm with 26,000 copyrights and about $250 million under management. In 2021, Beyond Music created Asia’s first song fund with support from institutional investors including KB Securities, Base Investment and Maven Growth Partners. Last year, it added funding from the electronics and entertainment company Dreamus.
In 2022, Lee doubled down on Korean content by launching an exchange-traded fund focused on Korean entertainment companies, the KPOP and Korean Entertainment ETF. Prominent Korean music companies HYBE, SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment are in its portfolio, but it also includes Studio Dragon, a TV studio; Naver, owner of messaging app Line; and Kakao, owner of Korea’s largest music subscription service, Melon.
In the West, investment money has been flowing heavily into music IP for more than a decade, especially in the last five years. It seems like the practice took root in Korea much later. Why do you think that is?
In 2017-18, when Hipgnosis started, there were very few precedents for Korean capital markets. You’ve got to understand the market, the nomenclature, the industry network. You have to know the nooks and crannies of the IP business. And also, you need to have a financial grasp, the understanding of capital markets, how to raise capital, how to structure the company, how to build, how to do tax-efficient modeling, IRR [internal rate of return] predictions, quantitative valuations. This is very much a quantitative business, whereas the understanding of the IP business is a relatively qualitative business. So, these are polar opposites in terms of business characteristics. In the past, I don’t think in Korea there was a team that really embodied these polar opposites.
We have people from PwC, KPMG, KKR and Morgan Stanley on our team. We have producers and someone who used to be a top-level executive of the largest music value chain company in Korea. I think that was why we were first to scale, to be able to build and raise funds from the very conservative institutional capital of Korean or Asian private equity and limited partner network.
Streaming is driving growth in global recorded music and publishing revenue, and that growth has helped attract new investors and more investment in general. Is streaming also the main factor behind increased investor interest in music IP in Korea?
Yes. I think it’s twofold. No. 1: streaming in the domestic market. Korea ranked [at] No. 6 in terms of market size for music globally. Japan is No. 2. Add Japan and Korea together, it almost equals the European Union. So it is a big market on its own, and local growth here is definitely driving part of it. Another part is Korean content’s market share in the global music industry. In the past, Korean music rights’ primary source of revenue was domestic usage, and therefore domestic growth was the only tailwind. But now we see the market share of Korean music growing exponentially year over year in other parts of Asia and moreover in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa regions, Europe, North America. Not just BTS and BLACKPINK, but more midtier artists. You become fans of Korean music through those more hallmark artists, but you end up trickling down to other more long-tail or indie artists as well. And all the markets have been benefiting.
You have a large catalog. Do some of your less popular songs have commercial potential outside of Korea?
We have a mix of more global, more well-received catalogs and older, Korean-focused catalogs. The former obviously is a direct beneficiary of such a market growth trend. The latter, to a lesser degree, is also benefiting. It’s surprising that songs on Spotify that are not as famous as BTS at all are getting relative hype from other parts of Asia, and we see it for some of our older catalog as well. I don’t know how they were discovered, but on YouTube playlists, on YouTube comments, we see Spanish, we see French, we see it with Southeast Asian languages for songs we own that are 10 to 15 years old.
Multiples and valuations have risen a lot over the last few years. What’s the Korean market like right now? Is it as heated as other markets?
It is more heated than before, but to my knowledge, the blended multiple acquisition average used to be between 20 and 30 times. Now with the higher interest rate, multiples are still within the high teens, like 17, 18, 19, or at least like 15. But in Korea, or at least for us, our acquisition multiple, the blended average, is still below 10. So, we have been able to acquire very good assets. We think they are not lesser than their U.S. or U.K. counterparts at all. So, from a quantitative viewpoint, these don’t necessarily have to be valued at such a discrepancy. But I think it’s a newer market here, and therefore there’s less competition.
Is it safe to assume that you’ll encounter more competition in the coming years?
I’m hoping not. But from a reasonable standpoint, I do see that may be unavoidable. But it’s a good thing for us, because it will also help with our existing catalog valuing up.
What do you do to create additional value for the IP you purchase? Do you actively manage, market and promote the catalog — what Hipgnosis calls “song management”?
Whatever Hipgnosis is doing, we’re doing it essentially, whether it be synch, remixes, copyright, better revenue collection techniques. We put our methodologies into two main categories: active management and passive management. We define passive as collecting what was already ours but was somehow being lost due to Content ID not being perfectly managed by YouTube itself. So we employ additional music-pattern recognition — tech companies around the world — to do better collection for our existing catalog, which I know Hipgnosis is also doing. We try to find and mix a better lineup of distribution companies — intermediary publishers, etc. — to maximize our revenue while minimizing the middleman fee. For active, we’re doing remakes. We’ve already done a dozen remakes of our songs. I think two are now in the top 100 charts for Korean music. These are songs that were published 16 years ago, so after acquisition, we made remakes of the songs with new, up-and-rising artists in Korea. By remaking the songs, we hold the new assets as well as our existing assets. We’ve also worked with media channels in Korea to do music-related shows.
You recently purchased your first major U.S. acquisition: the catalog of producer-songwriter Greg Wells. To do this, you set up a U.S. subsidiary. Do you plan on creating subsidiaries in other countries to pursue acquisitions elsewhere?
Yes, for sure. The U.S. was a symbolic move for us. Our targets, however, lie toward lower-multiple opportunities. So, basically, Asia. We might set up subsidiaries. We might get direct acquisition from our Korean entity. But positioning ourselves as a more Asia-focused, Asia-Pacific music aggregator is our next step.
What might surprise people about the Korean music market?
The market size. For starters, it’s larger than most European countries — larger than Canada, Mexico or most Latin American countries, or even countries with more population like Indonesia. I think it’s bigger than Italy. Korea is really an advanced country. I can say that with more certainty now than I would have been able to seven or eight years ago.
How much of South Korea’s music market depends on the ability of K-pop to keep growing as much as it has in recent years?
That is a topic of interest for Korean media and Korean industry specialists as well — whether this is a one-hit wonder, a short-lived irregularity or a trend. People have been internally questioning, or doubting, the longevity of the trend. This issue has been raised for five, six years. Every year, there’s someone who says, “OK, you know, this cannot sustain. Maybe this is the peak. The next year, it might be difficult.” But the last five or six years have seen more growth every year, surpassing everyone’s expectation. This does have a kind of faith component, and I do have faith. I’m biased. But I think my bias stands with multiple consecutive years of a proven record. There’s no other country, outside of the U.S., that spends and reinvests as much money for better-quality music production as Korea. I’m very, very optimistic that this is not a one-time thing, but is a trend that will stick around at least for the next 10 years.
Drake’s lawyers are firing back at efforts to force the superstar to sit for a deposition over the murder of XXXtentacion, claiming he has no connection at all to the crime and that defense attorneys are merely trying to “add more layers of celebrity and notoriety” to the case.
Just days after a Florida judge ordered Drake to appear for such a deposition by Feb. 24, the rapper’s lawyers argued in a new motion filed on Sunday that there is no evidence suggesting that he was in any way connected to XXXTentacion’s 2018 shooting death.
“It is both unreasonable and oppressive to subpoena an out of state party who has not been mentioned in any reports, any investigation, or referenced to have any involvement in this matter,” Drake’s attorney Bradford M. Cohen wrote in the response filing. “To mandate that he appear for deposition for something that he very clearly has no relevant knowledge of is unreasonable.”
Prosecutors have never claimed that Drake (real name Aubrey Graham) was involved in the death of XXXTentacion (real name Jahseh Onfroy). Instead, they charged four Florida men — Dedrick Williams, Trayvon Newsome, Michael Boatwright and Robert Allen – who they allege killed XXX during a robbery that escalated into deadly violence.
But defense attorney Mauricio Padilla, who represents Williams in the case, listed Drake on a star-studded witness list in December. And at opening arguments last week, Padilla suggested that the police had not sufficiently investigated a possible connection to Drake, who allegedly had an existing feud with XXX before his death. Such speculation has been fueled by a 2018 social media post – later deleted – in which XXX said: “If anyone tries to kill me it was @champagnepapi,” referring to Drake by his Instagram name.
Planning to make those arguments at trial, Padilla attempted to force Drake to sit for a Jan. 27 deposition, but he’s claimed in court filings that the star didn’t show up for the hearing. So last week, the judge overseeing the case ordered Drake to either appear for a deposition via Zoom on Feb. 24, or risk being held in contempt of court.
In Sunday’s filing, Drake’s lawyers pushed to set that order aside. They said the subpoena was not properly served on the superstar, meaning he had been under no procedural obligation to show up. And even if it had been, they argued that he has no connection to the case that requires a deposition in the first place: “No evidence has been provided to substantiate the assertion that the Non-Party in any way contributed to, had knowledge of, or participated in the alleged incident.”
Instead, Drake’s lawyers pointed to the fact that prosecutors plan to show jurors video evidence of the defendants committing the crime. And they cited that headline-grabbing December witness list — which also listed Quavo, Offset, Tekashi 6ix9ine, Joe Budden and even the late Migos rapper Takeoff after he had already been killed – as evidence that defense attorneys were merely trying to pull unrelated big names into the case.
“It would appear, based on the names mentioned on the witness list filed by defendant’s counsel, that the intent to subpoena [Drake] is less for the purpose of discovering relevant evidence and testimony, but instead add more layers of celebrity and notoriety to a tragic and unfortunate event,” the star’s lawyers wrote.
Padilla, the defense attorney who is seeking to depose Drake, did not immediately return a request for comment Monday on Drake’s response filing.
ValueAct Capital Management, a hedge fund with a history of being an activist investor, now holds a stake in Spotify. Mason Morfit, the San Francisco-based company’s chief executive officer and chief investment officer, revealed the firm’s ownership in Spotify shares at an event at Columbia University on Friday (Feb. 10), according to reports.
Spotify shares rose 3.6% to $125.16 on Friday following the news.
ValueAct, which did not reveal the timing of the investment, enters the picture as Spotify appears determined to improve its margins and reign in costs. Two weeks ago, Spotify announced a reorganization and layoff of 6% of its staff. Chief content officer Dawn Ostroff, who used lucrative licensing and original content deals to build Spotify’s podcast business, departed the company. The New York-based executive’s duties were absorbed by chief business officer Alex Norström out of Spotify’s Swedish headquarters. In the fourth quarter, Spotify showed a willingness to pare costs by laying off staff in its original podcasts and some of its live programming.
“During the boom, it applied these powers to new markets like podcasts, audiobooks and live chat rooms,” ValueAct’s Morfit said according to The Financial Times. “Its operating expenses and funding for content exploded. It is now sorting out what was built to last and what was built for the bubble.”
ValueAct owns shares in dozens of companies including Twenty-First Century Fox, Nintendo, The New York Times Company, Microsoft and Adobe Systems.
Exactly what this means for Spotify’s decision-making isn’t immediately clear. Like Meta, Alphabet and some other prominent tech companies, Spotify has a dual-class share system that grants its founders with enough voting power to control corporate governance. In a single-class structure, shareholders’ voting power is proportional to the number of shares they own. In a dual-class system, ordinary shares have far less voting power than a second type of shares.
Spotify’s co-founders own only 38% of outstanding common shares but own 100% of the company’s “beneficiary certificates,” each of which has 10 times the voting power of an ordinary share but no economic rights. The arrangement gives CEO Daniel Ek and co-founder Martin Lorentzon 74.3% of voting power, according to Spotify’s 2022 annual report, and ensures the duo can choose the board of directors despite owning a minority of the company’s economic interest.
As of Dec. 31, 2022, Ek has 16.5% of outstanding common shares and 31.7% of total voting power while Lorentzon owns 11.1% of ordinary shares and 42.6% of total voting power. The next-largest shareholder, Baille Gifford & Co, owns 14.5% of ordinary shares and 5.1% of voting power. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings owns 8.6% of ordinary shares, but Ek exercises those shares’ voting rights.
Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” has resided at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs for six weeks, joining Johnny Cash’s version of “Orange Blossom Special” as the only top 10 country songs to employ the citrus color in their titles.
Meanwhile, Dustin Lynch rides at No. 49 in his third week on Country Airplay with “Stars Like Confetti,” a song that, if it reaches the top 10, would become the first in that tier to reference a blast of party paper in its name.
The country genre has long used wordplay to tell its stories and hook its listeners, but increasingly, the wordplay is less about twisting meanings and more about applying words that one doesn’t normally expect to hear in a three-minute song. Sometimes it’s a reference as silly as the restaurant shoutouts — Applebee’s, Frosty and Oreo shake — in Walker Hayes’ “Fancy Like” or as weighty as the term “patriarchy,” which appeared in Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version).” Both songs topped Hot Country Songs in the last two years.
“The line was on a key chain,” Swift’s co-writer, Liz Rose, notes of “patriarchy.” “That was very specific.”
Capturing details from the writers’ lives — as both “Fancy Like” and “All Too Well” did — is one of multiple reasons to throw an odd word or phrase into a lyric. Sometimes it happens because it’s dictated by geography: Alan Jackson created a light atmosphere when he rhymed “Chattahoochee,” a river that was previously unknown to large swaths of Americans, with “hoochie koochie”; The Oak Ridge Boys brought a Pennsylvania tributary, the Monongahela, to the national spotlight with their 1988 release “Gonna Take a Lot of River.” And in other instances, the word fulfills a poetic function at the end of a line, as the phrase “happily delusional” does in Old Dominion’s “Memory Lane.”
“We had ‘loving you as usual,’ and you’re just searching for a rhyme,” the band’s Trevor Rosen recalls. “The guy had to throw [“delusional”] out there twice. It’s a weird word. It’s like, ‘I wonder if you could say that?’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, wait, no, that’s actually it.’”
Old Dominion has a history with oddball phrases —“drunk as a skunk eating lunch” appears in “I Was on a Boat That Day,” and it titled a 2015 single “Snapback,” a ball-cap term that wasn’t necessarily known to everyone. But that happens in great part because the band is willing to chase down odd terms, where some other songwriters might balk.
“It depends on the room,” says “Memory Lane” co-writer Jessie Jo Dillon. “People like the Old Dominion guys — I mean, nobody’s scared to do something strange.”
Lynch, on the other hand, experienced an internal debate about “Stars Like Confetti.” He had doubts regarding the song he was about to hear when he first saw the title, and even after the demo hooked him, he still had reservations for a time, fearful that the vocabulary might not suit him.
“I’ve been the one that has questions, if the word ‘confetti’ isn’t masculine enough to do,” Lynch admits. “The circle I have, obviously we scrutinize a lot. We’re very tough on ourselves and try to really pick apart everything we can about a song and make sure we’re looking at all the angles of a song. I kept coming back to, like, ‘Is it cool for a dude that lives to hunt and farm? Do I sing “confetti”?’ I had to do some soul searching and just make sure you’re like, ‘OK, am I going to be cool singing a song the rest of my life if it takes off?’”
Obviously, “Confetti” won out. Others have fared well over the long haul with terminology that seems uncommon in the conservative country world. George Strait calmly considered “transcendental meditation” in his breezy “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” Faith Hill navigated “centrifugal motion,” “perpetual bliss” and “pivotal moment” in the chorus of “This Kiss,” and Lori McKenna shared a Grammy nomination with Swift this year for “I Bet You Think About Me,” a song that whips out “pedigree,” “upper-crust circles” and “organic shoes” in its narrative.
“We’re so used to listening to things in the background,” McKenna says, noting that unusual vocabulary “really can bring the listener right to ‘Wait, what was that?’ I don’t think it’s meant to be a trick, but I never stop an artist when a word works for them. My job is to stay away from changing their truth.”
Neal McCoy, who sang “no need to psychoanalyze” in the course of the 1994 single “Wink,” was perhaps ahead of his time with the therapist lingo. Chris Young couched the phrase “to hell with the closure” in a key chorus passage in “I’m Comin’ Over,” and Ingrid Andress’ new “Feel Like This” explores “manipulation,” “toxic situations,” “security” and “stability.”
Andress offers those words unapologetically.
“That was sort of intentional,” she says. “I wanted to move the genre forward and to kind of keep up with the rest of society because in most places, I think people in my generation are comfortable talking about the fact that they go to a therapist, but I know that that’s not true for everywhere. I just want to start normalizing that in conversation.”
Although that kind of expression may not feel normal to every act.
“Those are words — like ‘manipulation’ — that only a girl like her can use,” says “Confetti” co-writer Zach Crowell. “I would encourage her to use that stuff. You don’t hear Luke Bryan saying those words. That’s good. It’s honest.”
That’s great confirmation, though Andress doesn’t seem to need it. Something in the orange says she’ll be populating her songs with intelligent phrases as long as she pursues her singer-songwriter role.
“At the end of the day, I’m just writing my story,” she says. “It will come out the way that it feels truest to me. If that’s something that has not been done before in the genre, then I view that as a win. Because I think my goal is to constantly discover new art forms and new ways of saying things. Whether people like it or not, I’m still going to be doing it anyway.”
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Uber Eats’ commercial featuring Diddy, Montell Jordan, “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?),” the guy who sings “What Is Love,” an oddly-timed haircut and two pineapples may be the first clue that Super Bowl ads are going lighter in 2023 — a pattern reflected in the music synchs for the big game.
After three years of the pandemic, Jordan’s 1995 smash “This Is How We Do It” and Kelis’ 2003 hit “Milkshake,” both Universal Music Publishing Group synchs used in the Uber Eats spot, represent a shift from apocalyptic and inspirational Super Bowl commercials and soundtracks starring old-timey crooners and string sections to familiar, upbeat hits and plentiful comedy.
“Humor remains the dominant theme this year,” says Tom Eaton, senior vp of music for advertising for UMPG, which represents the Jordan and Kelis tracks and suggested them to the brand’s music supervisors. “There have been a few sentimental commercials, but the vast majority have trended towards humor — and music can be such an important aspect of creating that mood.”
“I haven’t seen that heightened seriousness, which I think is a good thing,” adds Keith D’Arcy, senior vp of sync and creative services for Warner Chappell Music, whose synchs at this year’s Super Bowl include DMX‘s “What’s My Name,” for a Downy spot starring Danny McBride. “The country is in a good place where we’re more inclined to want to laugh and celebrate.”
That means lots of feel-good tracks, many of which were released in the ‘90s – from “What’s My Name” and “This is How We Do It” to a Clueless throwback ad for Rakuten starring Alicia Silverstone and Supergrass‘ 1995 U.K. hit “Alright.” The ’90s trend may have begun last year with Doja Cat‘s cover of Hole‘s “Celebrity Skin” for Taco Bell, says Rob Christensen, executive vp and head of global synch for Kobalt, whose lone synch this year is soul singer Lee Fields’ “Forever” for pet-food brand The Farmer’s Dog. “The ’90s are back,” he says. “That seems to be around pop culture everywhere right now.”
“It’s cyclical,” adds Scott Cresto, executive vp of synchronization and marketing for Reservoir Media, which has three synchs, including a Pringles spot with Meghan Trainor singing Tina Turner‘s “The Best.” “Most folks’ favorite music is from [ages] 13 to 30. They’re down the line in their careers and making the decisions and picking their favorite songs.”
Although not all final synch tallies for nationally televised spots were available at press time — publishing execs say permissions and requests for songs were unusually late this year, including a rush job that came in from an agency this past Monday — Sony Music Publishing (SMP) scored the most with 15, UMPG had seven, Warner Chappell Music had six or seven, BMG landed five, Primary Wave and Reservoir had three apiece and Kobalt had one.
Despite inflation, layoffs, high interest rates and sporadic recession talk, synch rates were stable this year, according to publishers. “It’s in line with past Super Bowl campaigns,” says Marty Silverstone, partner/senior vp creative/head of synch for Primary Wave, whose synchs include Missy Elliott‘s “We Run This” for Google Pixel. Adds Dan Rosenbaum, vp of licensing and advertising, for BMG, whose synchs include Supergrass’ “Alright” and co-writes for Turner’s “The Best” and Elliott’s “We Run This”: “Recognizability is so important in commercial usage. If that song is going to work for them, they’ll pay the price.”
Super Bowl LVII is the first since Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” landed on Stranger Things in May 2022, became a No. 1 hit and unexpectedly dominated the synch business. Do publishers believe the big game, for which 30-second ads cost a reported $7 million, will have a similar impact for their songs? Yes and no.
“That Kate Bush song wasn’t well-known and the show blew it up. On the Super Bowl, they play it a little more safe by using more tried-and-true hits,” says Brian Monaco, president/global chief marketing officer for SMP, which represents Len‘s “Steal My Sunshine” (for a Sam Adams spot), Sarah McLachlan‘s “Angel” (Busch) and Olivia Rodrigo‘s “Good 4 U” (Pepsi). “On a TV show, it’s a little easier, because the fees are lower. If it doesn’t work, you’re on to the next one.”
Despite SMP’s success at landing Super Bowl synchs this year, Monaco’s staff was unable to successfully pitch one key artist: Bruce Springsteen, who sold his music rights to the company for a reported $550 million in 2021. “It just didn’t fit,” he says, while noting that even for a superstar like Springsteen, getting a Super Bowl synch is a coveted career highlight: “Everyone’s hope — every writer, every artist — is the Super Bowl platform. We need more big events like this to get more music played.”
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On Feb. 1, days before the Grammy Awards, Billboard honored HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk with the Clive Davis Visionary Award at the annual Power 100 event for creating a company that, as Bang put it in his acceptance speech, “challenges the traditional boundaries of music and entertainment.” Fittingly, just one week later, Bang put the global music industry on notice with two major deals that further solidified HYBE’s status as more than the home of BTS and a budding empire and force in pop culture.
First, HYBE America, the U.S. division led by CEO Scooter Braun, acquired QC Media Holdings, the parent company of Atlanta-based hip-hop label Quality Control Music, home to Migos, Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, City Girls and others. Quality Control gives HYBE a hip-hop presence to complement its core K-pop acts (BTS, TOMORROW X TOGETHER) and HYBE America’s pop- and country-leaning rosters from SB Projects (Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande) and Big Machine Label Group (Tim McGraw, Thomas Rhett), respectively. The deal also further diversifies HYBE beyond K-pop and helps alleviate the loss of BTS while its members pursue solo projects and enter government-mandated military service.
Now the No. 1 K-pop music company by market capitalization ($6.5 billion), HYBE on Thursday (Feb. 9) announced it spent $334 million for a 14.8% stake in K-pop rival SM Entertainment, the company behind NCT 127 and SuperM. In buying the majority of founder Lee Soo-man‘s shares, HYBE became the top shareholder in the third-largest Korean music company. With a market capitalization of $1.85 billion, as of its closing price on Friday (Feb. 10), SM Entertainment ranks only slightly behind JYP Entertainment’s $1.9 billion and is more than double YG Entertainment’s $780 million.
Becoming SM Entertainment’s top shareholder can further HYBE’s leading position in South Korea, an increasingly important music market worth $6 billion in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. A 15% stake doesn’t give HYBE control over SM Entertainment, but it creates opportunities to work for mutually beneficial outcomes. One could see SM Entertainment artists taking advantage of HYBE’s Weverse social media platform, for example.
The Quality Control deal was worth $300 million in cash and stock, according to HYBE’s regulatory filing. Valuing the company at a multiple of 12 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — the midpoint of the 10 to 14 times enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple typically seen in deals for similar music companies — implies Quality Control has annual EBITDA of roughly $25 million. That should provide a nice boost to HYBE’s bottom line. In 2021, HYBE had adjusted EBITDA of $232 million. Through the first nine months of 2022, HYBE’s adjusted EBITDA was $220 million. That implies Quality Control could provide HYBE with a 7.5% to 10% boost in adjusted EBITDA if it finishes 2022 by merely matching its adjusted EBITDA from the fourth quarter of 2021 — and that’s without considering any cost savings resulting from the merger.
HYBE’s annual EBITDA puts it in a middle ground between the three majors and large independent companies. Universal Music Group’s calendar 2021 EBITDA was $2 billion (1.68 billion euros). Warner Music Group’s EBITDA for the year ended Sept. 30, 2022, was $1.2 billion. Sony Music Entertainment does not report EBITDA but paces well ahead of HYBE. After the majors, however, there’s a large gap. BMG’s 2021 EBITDA was $170 million. Hipgnosis Songs Fund posted EBITDA of $130 million in its year ended March 31, 2022. Reservoir Media’s EBITDA in the year ended March 31, 2022, was $41 million. If HYBE matches its EBITDA from the fourth quarter of 2021, it would exceed $300 million in calendar 2022. Had HYBE owned Quality Control during 2022, its EBITDA would have been in the area of $325 million (assuming $92 million in fourth-quarter 2022 EBITDA).
HYBE’s two moves this week are proof the music industry is more competitive and dynamic than some market share numbers might suggest. While the three major labels dominate the record business, independent companies — some distributed by the majors — are flourishing. HYBE certainly has its connections to the majors: Its music is distributed in the United States and other regions by UMG, it has a joint venture with UMG’s Geffen Records and many of its management clients are signed to major labels. But HYBE is ultimately independent of the majors. Based in South Korea, not London or New York, it’s a nimble outsider with a unique approach to melding music and technology.
Perhaps most important to HYBE’s continued growth — and what sets it apart from much of its competition — is how it’s going about doing it. Whereas catalog (music older than 18 months) has taken a larger share of consumption and the industry’s biggest deals and investments have involved established catalogs from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Sting and others prized as safe investments — billions of dollars are flowing into the music industry to acquire intellectual property that’s often many decades old — HYBE is paving its way through entrepreneurism of a different sort.
Like 300 Entertainment (purchased by Warner Music Group in 2021), Alamo Entertainment (purchased by Sony Music Entertainment in 2022) and LVRN (recently valued at more than $100 million), HYBE builds new artists from scratch, sets trends and influences pop culture — beyond TikTok, at that. Now, as it rapidly builds its empire, Bang, Braun and the rest of the company are starting to show what that looks like at scale.
The Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) had its first meeting of 2023 on Feb. 2 and invited National Music Publishers’ Association President and CEO, David Israelite, to address the organization. In his wide-ranging presentation, Israelite discussed artificial intelligence, Twitter, “realistic” copyright royalty board reform, and Phonorecords III (the ruling which will set U.S. streaming mechanical rates for the period of 2018-2022), which he said will be resolved “any day now.”
“We are five years and 33 days late of knowing what our rates are and counting,” said Israelite of Phono III, which was intended to be resolved at the start of the period in 2018 but has drug on ever since. In 2018, the NMPA and the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) had won an increase in the headline rate that songwriters and publishers are paid, but the following year Google, Spotify, Amazon and Pandora all appealed the ruling, hoping to go back to a previous rate they had paid in the period before. This led to indecision at the Copyright Royalty Board until July 1, 2022, when the judges announced a long-awaited determination in the remand proceeding, favoring to uphold what headline rate publishers and songwriters had asked for in 2018 but also providing other concessions to the streaming services, but the announcement was not the end of the road for Phono III. A true final determination still has yet to be announced.
“This is the definition of a broken process,” Israelite told the crowd of independent publishers. “This is why our top legislative priority for this next Congress is going to be reforming the way that the CRB works.” A number of independent voices in the songwriting and publishing community have voiced differing opinions regarding how to reform the CRB, how rates should be set, and who should get a seat at the negotiating table, as evidenced in their comments to the board during the proceedings of Phono IV. “CRB reform will only happen if all the parties come together and agree on what to do,” Israelite said. “When I talk about CRB reform, I’m going to talk about it in terms of what is possible, not in terms of what is utopia. There’s a lot we would change if we could [but some of] that is not happening.”
“Instead, we’re focused on two things: First, this process should encourage settlements. The goal of this process is to avoid going to court and working thing out like we have. Second part is that if you have to go to trial, if the settlement fails, then that process should work. When we have to wait more than five years to know what our rates have been, it doesn’t work,” he said. He also requested more resources for the Copyright Royalty Board’s judges.
In Congress, Israelite noted that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is the chair of the judiciary committee, does not have a history of dealing with music issues. So, he suggested, “We have to bring [the House] what is close to a finished product with consensus from the industry if there is any chance at passing CRB reform.”
Moving on to his “top legal focus” for the NMPA this year, Israelite called out Twitter for “hiding behind the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act].” He said, “Twitter is the last major social media company that does not license and pay songwriters.” Since December 2021, the NMPA has been tracking infringements on the platform and systematically sending Twitter takedown notices. Since then, Israelite noted the NMPA has found over 240,000 unique infringements on Twitter. If Twitter does not take appropriate action to take down infringing material and safeguard against future infringements, Israelite said, “they could lose their safe harbor. What does it mean to lose your safe harbor? It means we now can sue you for copyright infringement.”
He then pivoted to discuss artificial intelligence and how it might affect songwriters. There are two main categories of concerns for Israelite when considering AI: inputs and outputs. For inputs, he is concerned that copyright-protected songs could be used as training data, and for outputs, there is worry that AI generators could create derivative works or compete with human made music. “This threatens the entire music economy,” he said. “I think that is pretty clear.”
“We have absolutely no time or attention for a debate about whether this is good or bad about whether it can be stopped or not about whether the music industry likes this or doesn’t like this, that is irrelevant,” he said. “Go back over time over every new technological development, generally, we later figure out how to live with it and make it work for us. Let’s do it now on the front end. Let’s not wait 10 years, and then figure out what to do about this.”
He suggested there are a few ways to safeguard music publishing and songwriters from oncoming AI technology. First, he said the NMPA educates lawmakers about AI’s threats to the music business. “There will likely not be legislation on this for some time,” he explained. Israelite also noted that they will be watching the legal space as court cases resolve certain questions regarding AI, but admitted, “We are not in a position today to even think about bringing legal action against any of these technologies.”
“Market response, to me, is the one that is the most relevant,” he said, considering out loud potential scenarios for the publishers in the room, like, AI generated or assisted songs coming on to streaming services and drawing attention and royalties away from the publishers’ catalogs of human-made music. He also said that some AI could be used as a songwriting tool not too dissimilar to other music creation tools of the past. “We’re only just now beginning to scratch the surface,” he said of what this technology is capable of changing within the business.
“I don’t have many answers for you today, other than what I’m hoping is that as an industry, we approach these AI issues with the mindset of this is not necessarily bad. It doesn’t matter anyway, because we’re not going to control it,” he said. “Instead, what are the opportunities? And how do we engage with it in a productive way, so we don’t look back and say, ‘It took us 20 years to figure out how to deal with AI like we did with digital music’?”